


Here in the Ashes

by Im_just_bri



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff, Slow Romance, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 14:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18412208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Im_just_bri/pseuds/Im_just_bri
Summary: What if Five didn’t spend those 40 years in the apocalypse alone?





	Here in the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The only character I own is Natasha Hargreeves!

“Five?!” Ash calls rising from the table as the boy in question runs out of the room  
“Number 8 sit back down you were not excused” Dad snaps  
Ash ignores him and takes off after Five, hoping he hasn’t gotten far  
“Number 8 get back here!” He yells as she’s out the door  
He’s a few feet away when she catches up to him  
“Five please don’t do this!” She pleads grabbing ahold of his jacket.  
Right as she grabs it he spacial jumps and they’re in the middle of spring. She looks around stunned loosening her grip on his jacket as he continues walking. _he actually did it.._  
“Not ready my ass”  
His words break her out of her daze as she runs to catch up with him grabbing him.  
“Five!” She calls again as he spacial jumps a second time now sending them into winter. She’s caught off guard as the sudden gust of cold air and snow literally takes her breath away. She runs this time grabbing his hand right as he jumps again only this time they’re surrounded by ruins. He finally stops and looks around,shocked. Ash does too wondering what the hell happened. And suddenly their eyes lock, they look down at their joined hands, and quickly separate.  
Without speaking they both run back to what was once The Academy.  
Five stands at the doorway and yells into the rubble, calling for their siblings  
“Grab on” he says as a blue energy radiates from his fist, but nothing happens, he tries a few more time with no changes he sinks to his knees.  
They were trapped.  
Ash sinks down next to him and they sit in silence.  
“I didn’t even know you grabbed me.. if I did..” he doesn’t finish his sentence. “I’m so sorry.”  
“Apologizing won’t change anything” she says shaking her head. “What now?”  
________  
“Maybe we should build a shelter?” Ash says looking over at Five.  
A few days ago they had taken refuge in what was left of the library, one of the few buildings with walls up. It worked for now but they were gonna need better protection once it got cold.  
“I was thinking underground? I can get us deep enough to protect us from the wind?”  
“What about when it rains? Or snows? We’d get buried” Five answers closing his book and shaking his head.  
“Oh.. nevermind”  
“What about above ground? Maybe you can get a few walls and a roof up? There’s plenty of earth to work with.” He says hopefully  
She smiles and nods and he smiles back  
“How’s the water situation coming?”  
They discovered that while the library did have running water, it was very polluted. Luckily Ash figured out that she could manipulate the water away from whatever was polluting it and was currently boiling it, at Five’s insistence after he read about it.  
“I think it’s okay..” she says putting the water in two cups, she grabs one and partially freezes it before handing it to Five.  
“Cheers” He says before they both hesitantly drink. It’s not bad.  
“Ash. You are amazing”  
_________  
“Why did you come after me?” Five asks a few months later.  
It was evening and they had retired into their shelter for the night. Ash used her pyrokinesis to light a fire in the shelter to keep them warm while Five got their bed set up. It was a part of the routine they established.  
“I didn’t want you to leave, I was trying to stop you” She looks at him in the dim lighting.  
“Why?” He asks staring intently at her  
“Because you’re my best friend and I didn’t want to lose you.” 

*******flashback****  
“Dad I’m scared.” Ash said clinging to the Railing of a building downtown. She was standing on the edge, the only thing keeping her from falling was the railing she had a tight grip on  
“When a mother bird feels like her babies are ready to fly, often she’ll push them out of the nest” he said prying her fingers off the railing. “Enough dilly dallying”  
He pushed her her backwards sending her plummeting several stories and fast.  
Reginald watches for a few moments before sighing and shaking his head. She wasn’t gonna catch herself this time.  
“Number Five.” He signals to the boy standing next to him. He teleports down and grabs her just before she becomes a part of the sidewalk and sends them back into the roof.  
She falls to her knees bringing Five with her and sobs as he looks down at her worried.  
Reginald shakes his head walking over to the two and forcing Ash to her feet, leading her back to the edge.  
“Disgraceful.” He says pushing her over the edge again.

*******end flashback*********

“Hey where’d you go?” Five asks pulling her from her thoughts. He was now sitting next to her in front of the fire.  
She shakes her head.  
“I...” she can’t bring herself to finish the sentence.  
_It’s now or never_ she thinks suddenly leaning over and pressing her lips against his.  
He hesitates for a few moments before kissing her back, they break apart and he rests his forehead against hers.  
“I know.. me too” they stay like this for a minute before he rises holding out his hand. “Let’s get some sleep, we have a long day tomorrow”  
_________  
Their relationship blossomed slowly after that fateful night. Hand Holding while going on supply runs became a common occurrence.The first time it happened was the very next day and no one made a big deal out of it.  
They decided to head to head out a little farther than normal, their sources nearby starting to dwindle and it was about an hour’s walk. Five was pulling the cart behind them and Ash had made a joke about building a sailboat on wheels to get them places faster. Five laughed, seriously considering it, and silently grabbed her hand, lacing his fingers through hers.

Next came kissing before one of them left. It was inevitable, sometimes they’d have to split up. This particular occasion was a few years later; Five had left to scavenge and Ash stayed at the library to attempt to start a garden- She and Five ate what they could find and she was tired of cockroaches. She got the idea while looking the grass poke through the roads on their walk a few days ago.  
“I’ll be back before dark I promise” he said leaning in and kissing her before leaving. After that it would happen every time one of them left, even if it was just for a few minutes.

The third Milestone was actually sleeping together and by that I mean actually sharing a bed ,or in their case pile of blankets. You’d think that they’d instantly huddle together at night for warmth, it’s survival 101, but those first few weeks after their arrival they avoided physical contact at all costs. Ash was terrified to touch Five, the last time she did she ended up in the apocalypse; and Five avoided touching her out of guilt, seeing his adoptive younger sister afraid to touch him really upset and made him feel worse. But that changed after they found their sibling’s dead bodies. That night Five woke up screaming and without thinking Ash held him until he calmed down, they ended up falling asleep like this and it was the best night’s sleep either of them had gotten in weeks. After that it became an unspoken rule between them to sleep “together”.  
———————  
Five returned one evening around sunset. “I have a surprise for you” he said digging though his cart and pulling out a box with a crank. He starts turning it as Ash watches with curiosity. When he opens it she gasps. It’s a music box! And it’s playing ‘La Vie en Rose’.  
“Natasha Hargreeves, may I have this dance?” He asks removing his hat & mask. She nods taking his hands and lighting a few “candles” around them. “You’ve been busy” he says pulling her close. She rests her cheek against his and as they slow danced she subconsciously started humming along and he pulls away from her smiling.  
“You’re singing”  
“Oh.. sorry”  
“Don’t apologize. Delores said you have a really pretty voice”  
She laughs before continuing to sing along  
_“And when you speak angels sing from above, everyday words seem to turn into love songs. Give your heart and soul to me, and life will always be la vie en rose”_  
———————-  
“Is this what I think it is?” Ash asks looking at Five who’s attempting to hide his nerves behind a confident smirk.  
“I mean it’s been 11 years, it was bound to happen”  
The 2 now young adults were at their home base having some rare downtime when Five suddenly says “here catch” before throwing something Ash’s way. Ash didn’t really think anything of it because Five threw things to her often, and vise versa, only this time when she opened her hand she saw a handmade ring.  
“Five.. I don’t know what to say..”  
“Just say yes”  
She grabs a piece of metal from her scrap pile and holds it in her hand, shaping it as she walked towards Five. She tosses the bit of metal to him and he catches it with a disappointed look before realizing it wasn’t the ring he made Ash, but one she made him.  
“If we’re doing this you’ll need a ring too” she says closing the space between them and leaning up to kiss him.  
They kiss for a moment before he pulls away and gives her a confused look  
“When did you start controlling metal?”  
—————-  
“I don’t like her.”  
Five sighs and turns to Ash.  
“The first human we’ve seen in over 40 years and you don’t like her?”  
“She acts like you survived the past 40 years on your own and I just sat on my ass twiddling my thumbs”  
“Well we both know you didn’t. You don’t have to like her, I just have to work for her”  
“I don’t know..”  
“It’s only for a few years, I’m really close to solving this equation.”  
“Do we have a deal?” The handler calls out to Five.  
“On one condition” he grabs Ash’s hand “She goes with me”  
“That can be arranged”

Over the years wherever (or whenever) Five went Ash went. Together the two became a lethal pair; Five exceeding everyone’s already high expectations and Ash surprising everyone, most notably for assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip was more focused on his sandwich and missed… twice. She may have ended up killing him too out of annoyance.  
She was with him at the Kennedy assassination when he finally figured it out.  
As he focuses a blue portal appears and an extinguisher of all things come flying at them.  
“Together?” He yells over the chaos  
“Together.”  
They push their way through the portal and fall through crashing to the ground. Five looks over at Ash before looking down at himself.  
“Shit.” He says standing. They were both 13 again.  
“Am I the only one who sees a little Number Five and Natasha?”  
—————  
Where did you two go?  
“The future.” Five says handing Ash half of his peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich.  
“It’s shit by the way.” Ash says before taking a bite.  
“Called it” Klaus says  
“If you were in the future the whole time why are you two still kids.?”  
“Yeah… I need you to explain that one too?” Ash says looking up at him.  
Five rolls his eyes at her but starts explaining “In the end, I had to project our consciousnesses forward into a suspended quantum state version of ourselves that exists across every possible instance of time.”  
Ash looks at him and blinks  
“That makes no sense”  
“Well it would if you were smarter”  
Ash snickers as Diego has to be held back by Luther, who’s huge.  
————  
“Eww.” She says opening her wardrobe and glaring. All she has are those god awful uniforms. Sighing she grabs the nearest dress .  
She frowns as she looks at her reflection. Other than being almost a foot shorter and hating her uniform, her curly hair was now too long for her liking, she kept it long when she was younger but 10 years into the apocalypse she started cutting it, keeping it no longer than a bob. She considers asking mom to cut it when Five suddenly appears.  
“You look beautiful” he tries  
“I look ridiculous..”  
“Yeah. These uniforms are shit.” He says earning a laugh. He teleports to Ash’s shelf, “think of it this way” he says looking through her records, finding one, and putting it in her record player “we have more time to spend together”  
‘La vie en rose’ starts playing and she smiles  
“You remembered?”  
“How could I forget? It’s kind of our song.” He pulls her close and they sway “these next few days are about to be rough”  
“I know.. do you think they’ll find us?”  
“It’s inevitable.” He slightly pulls away and looks at her, “If they somehow capture you.. give me a day to find you. They’ll probably come after you first to use you as leverage and since they want to think you’re ordinary we should take advantage of it”  
Ash nods before resting her head on his shoulder, they’re soon disturbed by a knock on Ash’s door.  
“Time to say goodbye”


End file.
